Oh, frabjous day!

Adios, you fucking asshole.

UPDATE, 8/9/10: The above link no longer works; it referred to a news article about the death, in prison, of Slobodan Milosevic.


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consequentialism, deontology, upaya,and "Follow your situation"

Charles of Liminality brings up an interesting point in a recent response to one of my comments (see original post and comments here):

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't consequentialism another way of saying "the end justifies the means"? Personally, I think that can be a dangerous philosophy.

I think any philosophy blindly adhered to is dangerous.

Many ethicists draw the distinction between consequentialism and deontology. Consequentialists, who probably take their cue from the likes of David Hume or the Buddhist tradition (think: upaya) tend to weigh actions according to their fruits, an orientation that often does correspond to a "the end justifies the means" approach. Deontologists, in the tradition of Kant, tend to think in terms of abstract, universal principles: an action is wrong because it's wrong in principle, not merely because it's wrong at this moment. Deontologists, again taking after Kant, whose Christian biases are evident in his philosophy, think in terms of duty: the sense of obligation that leads to adherence to principle. ("Deontology" comes from the Greek "deon," meaning "duty," and isn't etymologically related to "ontology.")

Consequentialism is dangerous in certain cases if, for example, a desired result is achieved, but only at terrible cost. However, not all situations are so extreme. There is room for a consequentialist to weigh the pluses and minuses of his actions, and to try to see what his choices will lead to, every step of the way, in situations both uncommon and quotidian.

Deontology can be dangerous, too. "Thou shalt not kill," too strictly adhered to, would make it almost impossible to defend one's family against an intruder with obviously deadly intent. Here again, it would be unfair to judge the deontologist by extreme cases. I can note that "deontology can be a dangerous philosophy," but this assessment, while correct, results from exclusive focus on extremes and may be misleading about how the philosophy actually operates in everyday life.

It should be noted that the two orientations often produce the same sorts of action. Take, for example, the proverb about the hungry man:

Give a hungry man a fish, and you've fed him for a day. Teach him how to fish, and you've fed him for life.

The deontologist and the consequentialist, each for his own reasons, will agree with the above maxim. For the deontologist, it may be that a categorical imperative such as "When you help someone, give that person the maximum amount of help" will be relevant, in which case he'll teach the hungry man to fish. For the consequentialist, the literal truth of the proverb will move the helper to teach the man to fish rather than merely helping him for a single day, because it's obvious that teaching him to fish will ultimately produce better results.

What about the idea that one should never lie? Every major religion contains this precept, but the Buddhists, who also subscribe to the notion of upaya (skillful, expedient, or efficient means), tell an interesting story that goes something like this:

A man who has just taken the Five Precepts (no lying, no stealing, no sexual immorality, no killing of sentient beings, and no consumption of intoxicants) is walking along a forest path. Ahead of him, the path branches right and left. At that moment, a rabbit zooms by and takes the right fork. Just as our man is nearing the fork, a hunter runs up to him, stops, and asks breathlessly: "I was chasing a rabbit. Which way did it go?"

The newly minted Buddhist just took five precepts, two of which are now, it seems, in conflict. Should the Buddhist tell the truth, thereby dooming the rabbit? Should he lie, thereby breaking the great precept against uttering falsehoods?

In this case, the Buddhist decides to lie. Blind adherence to the no-lying precept would be unskillful action. Preserving the life of the rabbit should be more important than worrying about the karmic "stain" of a life-preserving falsehood.

This isn't a foreign concept for people of other religions: think about charitable families that hid Jews during World War II. Those good folks were lying constantly, in spite of the Judeo-Christian injunction against lying.* Such families had to make an ethical judgement call because several virtuous principles were in conflict.

Yet you might be asking yourself, "Well, how did the Buddhist know that telling the truth would be unskillful? Isn't he reasoning from a set of principles?"

No, he isn't. He is, in the language of Korean Zen, following his situation. In the language of American idiom, he's using his head (for something other than a hat rack). The discursive, logical, rational, principle-oriented, dualistic mind resists this insight mightily** and finds itself asking, rather petulantly, "But, then, how do you know--?" STOP RIGHT THERE!

If you're still looking for a reason, a principle, some sort of cosmic rulebook to be consulted no matter your situation, you aren't following your situation.

"Follow your situation" isn't really consequentialism or deontology. It's mere common sense. This is why Jesus was constantly getting into trouble: unlike his scripture-quoting interlocutors, he understood that blind adherence to precepts and principles was merely the following of the written scripture. Far more important for Jesus and other enlightened folks was the unwritten scripture, the unsayable scripture that we must live from moment to moment, which springs forth from our hearts and connects us all together-- that unutterable, dynamic, vital reality in which (to co-opt St. Paul) we live and move and have our being.

And maybe that's a good, nondualistic way to wrap this little essay up. As I noted in one of my comments, deontology and consequentialism aren't in fundamental opposition: they might, in fact, be considered forms of each other. If one stance is dangerous, well, so is the other: they are not-two.

---

*I'm aware that the phrase translated "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor" had a more technical valence in the original hebraic (and possibly Hammurabic) context, but if religions are as they are practiced, then evidence abounds that most Jews and Christians have construed and still construe the commandment as having a general import.

**See my post on the nondualistic approach to "right" and "wrong," here.


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Smells Like Golgotha: Chapter 50

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the "Ave, Joel!" foodblog

The story of Joel's peanut brittle, told with candor on his blog here and here and here, continues on my blog now that Joel's package has arrived from Gunsan.

The above sign, stuck on my door sometime Friday evening while I was out, says, "A registered package arrived and is being held by the concierge office." I like how neatly it's written: this is the "Carefully printed so the foreigner can understand" font. Actually, I appreciate that. Korean cursive is a pain to read.








The concierge last evening, a rather goofy fellow, kept speaking to me in deliberately broken Korean: "Package! Gunsan! Gunsan my hometown! When I was waaaa-waaa (i.e., sound of a baby crying), I was in Gunsan! Good!" While my Korean's got years to go before it's truly proficient, I know I speak better than that. It could simply be that the guy is used to dealing with the other foreigners in our building who can't speak much Korean at all.

As you see above, the box of goodies arrived via postal t'aek-bae delivery. I've blotted out Joel's and my contact information, lest any born-again Christians get funny ideas.








I opened the package downstairs and gave a small bag of Joel's peanut brittle to the adjoshi, who dubbed it yeot, a traditional Korean candy, after I was unable to produce the expression "peanut brittle" in Korean. What is the Korean expression for peanut brittle? Ddang-k'ong yeot? Probably not. The problem is that yeot, while a close approximation, doesn't quite capture the brittleness of peanut brittle. (By the way, I'm a huge fan of yeot.)

Above, we see into the already-opened box, minus the brittle I gave the goofy dude.








Above: your first glimpse of the glory to come. You can see the words "2nd batch" in magic marker on the clear plastic bag. I assume that "1st batch" went to the concierge downstairs.








YES! The brittle is MINE!








And here's the final shot of the brittle, laid out on a large plate. Joel, this is damn good. I know you don't want to accept any money, but you probably could get away with selling this to expats in Korea for a decent price. Just something to think about.

And now for something completely different:








The baguette version of the tuna-on-crackers snack I'd made before. Totally irrelevant to the peanut brittle, but I didn't want to do a separate foodblog post about it.

Thanks again, Joel!

And a quick note to Max: I wish I'd thought to take a series of pics after your wife's care package arrived. I regret not having done that, and I've slaughtered most of the contents of that package. Sorry, man.


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Smells Like Golgotha: Chapter 49

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Big Hominid on the vivisection table

Last week, a couple of us teachers were approached by a very nice linguistics student, JY, who is working on her MA thesis. Her paper is about communication breakdowns in the EFL classroom, and how such breakdowns are handled by both the students and the teacher. She said she needed to collect data for her report, and I openly guessed that (1) she would have to make in-class recordings, and (2) transcribe those recordings so she could review the speech samples at her leisure and do some Deborah Tannen-style discourse analysis.

Yup, that's right, she said.

So now I have a new "student."

It's sort of exciting, actually. Different teachers have handled JY's request in different ways. Some teachers want to inform their students about the "spy" in their midst, while others (me included) prefer to let her slip quietly into the class and pretend to be one of the crowd.

I remember a General Psych class from long ago, where we discussed something called the Hawthorne Effect (read about it here). The basic idea is that, when you perform an experiment on people, their awareness of the experiment will influence what you observe. My own feeling was that JY should pose as a student, but we both knew that she would have to "out" herself to the class eventually, because she plans to be taking copious notes during class.

So I asked her to compromise with me: since the semester only just started (we began this past Monday), why not have JY pretend to be a student for a few days, let the classmates get used to her, and then let her slowly reveal her true identity? JY agreed to this, and we're both hoping that the students won't freeze up when they find out what she's really up to. I'm pretty sure my students will be fine when JY unmasks herself: it's a fairly relaxed classroom atmosphere.

JY will be attending class for about four weeks-- enough time for her to see some of the more unsavory aspects of my line of work, including the inevitable student attrition. That doesn't really bother me; besides, JY told me she'd taken classes in my department before, so she knew all about The Way It Goes with student absences.

In the meantime, JY is also listening in on a couple other teachers. The classes represent a variety of skill levels and subject matter; the bitch of it all is that poor JY has to transcribe everything she records from every class, and she's generating a couple hours' worth of speech data every day. I wonder whether she might not have bitten off more than she can chew. Not being a statistician or a linguist, I have no idea how many samples JY truly needs in order to produce meaningful statistics.

Ah, me. There remains, somewhere in the dark depths of my warped and evil soul, a desire to go the linguistics route: to get a PhD in something like sociolinguistics and spend the rest of my life observing and analyzing speech patterns. But the pull toward linguistics isn't strong anymore; I find myself far more interested by hard science, philosophy, and religious studies.

I hope to provide occasional reports of how JY's experiment goes. She observed one of my classes today (Friday), and was very complimentary afterward-- not the most scientific attitude to take, but my ego appreciated it all the same. We discussed some of the things that went right and went wrong during class; I gave her a mini-sermon about how the books on theory sound nice, but ultimately, you put them aside, and just do it-- just teach.

JY's hoping to become an English teacher for Korean secondary school students (her English is very good, and she gets extra points for having spent time in the US studying at my alma mater, which is well known for linguistics), so I was eager to disabuse her of the notion that the books have all the answers. She seemed quite receptive to that point of view, which was a relief. The college-aged Kevin of 15 years ago wouldn't have been so open-minded: he would have nodded politely during the elder's sermon and then would have walked away shaking his head at the many points over which he disagreed.

So: good luck to JY and good luck to me as I go under the knife. I'll be curious to read those transcripts once JY gets them done.


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Smells Like Golgotha: Chapter 48

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a stellar example of Christian charity

This arrived in the comments section of an old post because the drooling idiot couldn't figure out how to append a comment to a recent post:

Shut the fuck up, Kev Kim. Your blog is the most shit blog that I've ever seen. Smells Like Golgotha? What is that? You are always hooked on marijuna when you post fucking shit on your blog? Did your mom and dad teach you to blaspheme God. Go to hell, idiot, your personal devil torturer is waiting there for you. Get a hair and and get a real job, you loser!

Oh, the punctuation! The spelling! The barely-English English!

Since the guy was too stupid to figure out how to place the comment somewhere prominent, I've done him the favor of slapping it up here, on Page One, for everyone to laugh at.

I'm always tickled by folks who try to insult we worse than I can insult myself. What I can't understand, in the above comment, is why the guy inserts a compliment in the middle of his diatribe:

Your blog is the most shit blog that I've ever seen.

Yes-- "the most shit blog" indeed!

This guy talks about "hell" and "your personal devil torturer," so I suppose he's religious. His post is a fantastic example of compassionate conduct.

Anonymous, you are my sifu. I hope you've read every single one of my Golgotha panels. Dig into your self-righteousness and send more text my way! My readers will thank you.

(Actually, I have a sneaking suspicion that the writer of the above comment isn't really a non-native speaker. I suspect it's someone who's faking it in order to obscure his identity. Double dose of cowardice: anonymous posting plus writing in a bad accent. Ah, well... we can't expect too much of the differently abled.)


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Smells Like Golgotha: Chapter 47

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"cankles"

A friend of mine recently taught me the term "cankles," which he says is American slang. Being an American, I thought I knew a lot of American slang. But, no: the word "cankles," it turns out, is a contraction of "calf" and "ankles," and refers to women whose calves and ankles are the same width. This can apply to both fat and skinny girls. One would think the term could also apply to us guys, but my friend assures me it's a word generally reserved for women.

Being a calf man myself, I'm instinctively turned off by the mental image of cankles, though I don't recall ever having seen them on chicks ranging from ectomorphic to somewhat rotund. The only bona fide cankles I've ever seen have been on extremely fat folks-- men and women. By "extremely," I mean "wider than they are tall." The morbidly obese.

Let's concentrate on calves for a sec, though. I don't have a calf fetish, but I do find a nice pair of calves to be a very sexy attribute on a woman. Women who run long distances usually have amazing, well-defined calves, the kind that are begging for a long massage. The calf muscle is the perfect size for pleasant kneading-- almost as if God decided to slap tits on women's legs. I stare unbashedly when I see shapely calves, which are rarer than a shapely pair of hooters. Female chests are nearly all the beneficiaries of modern technology these days; a woman without inflatable globes is something of a precious commodity (sure, I'll stare at the silicone, but I prefer the naturals).

I wonder, sometimes, why I don't hang around runners more. Those're the folks who've got it going; I should be frequenting their hangouts and taking in the scenery.

Then I look down at my gut and realize why I don't hang around runners. Mainly because, once they start moving, there's no way I can keep up with them, short of lassoing one and riding behind her on skis or in-line skates.


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damn

According to this article, Sir Anthony Hopkins became an American citizen in 2000. I had no idea. The article's a good read: Hopkins lashes out at precious Hollywood fops-- the spoiled and tyrannical actors and directors who forget who they are. Such folks need cutting down on occasion.


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Smells Like Golgotha: Chapter 46

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Sperwer and Rory: check them out

In a sequel to his warmup post, Sperwer gives a detailed, Latin-filled rundown of the many ways in which the human body can hurt after a brutal martial arts session. If there's one thing the Koreablogosphere needs more of, it's budoblogging.

Rory notes that his writing class is making him do assignments very similar to my (admittedly unoriginal) 100 Below exercise (recent examples here, here, and here).


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"fourteen years old and finger-fucking the girls"

Here's an interesting article on the provocative, foul-mouthed Christian theologian Stanley Hauerwas (the blog post's title is a Hauerwasian quote).


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up the mountain again

My sizable belly is full of red pepper from a jjol-myeon sae-t'eu lunch and a budae-jjigae dinner. Asshole's gonna be singing goch'u arias in a few hours.

The budae dinner was my reward for a hike that took me and my buddy Jang-woong from Beot'i-gogae Station past the National Theater, then rightward to the long path that takes you over a 3.2km road. The road leads you to a formidable set of stairs; the stairs lead to more stairs.

We huffed and puffed our way up to Seoul Tower, but didn't stay there long, because we were to meet JW's wife Bo-hyun for dinner.

I'm happy, at least, to be creeping back into the habit of going up the mountain. This bodes well. More news as it happens.


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Smells Like Golgotha: Chapter 45

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100 Below: Volume 18

Ninety-two-year-old Adele Henderson couldn’t have been happier. The 747’s engines had all given out at the same time, and the enormous plane was plunging earthward.

“Woo-hoo!” Adele crowed, exhilarated, feeling younger every moment.

People around her screamed and thrashed aimlessly.

“Nothing can stop us now!” Adele boomed into the gibbering chaos.

No one looked at her. No one had time to notice an old woman’s apotheosis.

Adele reached into her purse and grabbed the dildo hidden inside it. She pointed it like a lance toward the earth’s surface.

“Chaaaaarrrrrrge!” she bellowed.


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Smells Like Golgotha: Chapter 44

UPDATE: Before I fade out, I should point you to Charles's freshly-typed (so fresh you can smell the ions) Lenten essay on hell over at the always high-quality Liminality. Give it a read.

Me, I'm not a believer in hell. As our pastor said, "No Santa Claus God," by which he meant, "No God who rewards and punishes according to archaic conceptions of justice." Our church is mainstream Presbyterian (PCUSA), so there's very little hell-talk. I remember a good deal more fire and brimstone back when our family used to go to Emmanuel Baptist Church, just off Route 1 in Alexandria, Virginia, across from the Sequoia neighborhood where I used to live as a kid. Those Southern Baptists loved their hellfire.

On a philosophical level, I have trouble with the notion of a God (whose attributes are all supposedly "omni-," including the attribute of omnibenevolence) who constructs a thing called hell as a place/state reserved for the unrepentant. I'm also unconvinced that sinners can damn themselves if classical theism is to be believed: it was the omnipotent God who constructed the reward/punishment system, which means the system reflects God's biases and levels of tolerance-- levels that apparently are not infinite, which contradicts the idea of omnibenevolence. This contradiction is a big hint, for me, that hell is more of a human construction than a divine one, no matter what religion we're talking about.

But one could counterargue that core theological notions aren't meant to be logically consistent. I'd buy that: if, for example, we try to make logical sense of the idea that the Christ is both fully human and fully divine (see Dr. Vallicella's recent examination of that point), we run into contradiction right away. For a philosopher, this is problematic because logic is the main tool in the philosopher's toolkit, but for most people of faith, logic has little bearing on the spiritual life. Unfortunately, once we enter the realm of the non-logical, it becomes hard to say anything at all. Urgent questions of meaning remain (discursively, at least) unanswered.

The holy is, if nothing else, paradoxical. I think Charles does a very good job of delineating some of the salient paradoxes and showing how one man of faith wrestles with them. He and I may not agree on whether hell exists, but we do agree that our discussion at Puccini was enriching, and that the food kicked ass. Perhaps a brief glimpse of the celestial.


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gearing up for the grind

It's been a good vacation, and I'd like for it to continue, but all things end. As I mentioned earlier, I wish I'd done more with personal projects this past week, but it was fun to be able to hang with friends. This term, I'll have plenty to keep me busy as my department moves back to a five-day week, but my Tuesdays and Thursdays will be fairly light (notwithstanding occasional test rating to make up for an insufficiently full schedule).

Lesson planning should be somewhat easier this time around: I teach nothing but Level 1 conversation on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Tuesdays and Thursdays, I've got another Level 1 class, plus an intro-level reading course. We'll be doing a watered-down, break-it-to-'em-easy survey of Aesop's fables. Ought to be interesting. I did this with a Level 3 class two terms ago. Wasn't bad. I doubt I can expect the same high level of discussion from my intros, many of whom will be timid little freshmen.

Because we're back to regular classes, which feature no real grades and no strict attendance requirements, we can expect huge student attrition over the course of twelve weeks (you'll recall that our "Intensive English" terms are only eight weeks long). Most of us hate the attrition: in the final few weeks of the twelve-week term, some classes might have only one to three students, which makes life hard on the teacher. Teaching for a small audience is difficult business.

In the larger scheme of things, however, this sort of schedule is far less taxing than that of a typical hagwon (I still shudder at EC's 44 hr/week timetable), so I'll keep my moaning to a minimum.

I joined Smoo during the second half of the spring term-- late April 2005. I've come almost full circle, and, strange as it may sound, this will mark the first time I will have completed a one-year contract while working in Korea.* I plan to renew. The pay isn't great, but becoming rich has never been my goal. At this rate, I'm able to make headway on certain debts, and that's the important thing. No fancy TVs or MP3 players for this big boy, but it's not as though I want or need such comforts. I'm fine with my old, creaky Mac and my books.

So now it's off to bed, but before I go, I'll be slapping up the next day's comic strip (postdated to Monday). Hope you had a good weekend. Enjoy the brisk beginning of March; spring is right around the corner.

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*My checkered work history in Korea has gone something like this:

Early summer 1994-late spring 95: Was not allowed to teach 12th month of classes when I told the hagwon admin I had no plans to renew. Sued their ass and wrote about my story in the newspaper. Visit the Korea Herald archives (the building, not online), look up the June 15, 1995 issue and track down the article titled "Labor Pains." That was me. I was sued for libel. I eventually won both suits: mine against the hagwon, and the libel suit against me. Assholes.

January-April 1996: Worked at a hagwon in Kangnam. By the fourth month, I'd started to see that the place was turning into the same sort of shit factory as the previous place. Tendered my resignation. Got screamed at by the boss and threatened with a lawsuit. Big talk, empty threats. I shrugged and walked. No repercussions.

Late summer 2004-late winter 2005: Seven months at EC. Loved the coworkers, loved the students, but couldn't stand the dysfunctional vibe trickling down from the administration to our immediate management. Decided to seek new work after seven months of hell. With the help of friends (yes, Virginia, it does pay to have contacts), applied for and got the Smoo gig.

Summer 2005-present: Have been a happy camper ever since. This job hasn't been problem-free, but the problems are minor compared to all that I'd been through before.

When I look back on my employment record, it's not exactly something to be proud of-- skipping from one job to another. But my sanity has been of utmost importance to me, and no amount of money is worth the whole "just deal with it... it'll soon be over" bullshit. No: if "dealing with" a situation means allowing oneself to be treated inhumanely for long periods of time and little remuneration, then fuck that. While it's taken me longer than some blokes to learn that hagwons represent a dead end (and an increasing number of universities offer deals no different from hagwon contracts), I've finally learned my lesson. I think, all in all, that things have worked out for the best.

Some of you might be wondering what sort of employment filled my "missing years." Feel free to speculate. The only thing I'll say is that I was in America from late 1996 to late 2002. During that time, I temped in DC and got a Master's degree, which was instrumental in giving my life purpose again. Much of what appears in this blog is a mangled regurgitation of what I'd learned while at Catholic U. As for the other missing months... well, my life as a gigolo catering to hungry, 40-something mom-jjang adjummas will be the subject of another post, perhaps ten years from now.


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Dr. Hodges, Dr. Kueng, and the clash of civilizations

Over at Gypsy Scholar, there's an interesting post wherein Dr. Hodges expresses his disagreement with Dr. Hans Kueng, a prominent and controversial Catholic theologian and scholar. Father Kueng was one of my early heroes in my studies of interreligious dialogue (I'm thinking specifically of his Le christianisme et les religions du monde).

Dr. Hodges is of the opinion that Kueng is not a sufficiently strong defender of free speech. Based on the critique offered in Dr. Hodges's post (linked above), I would agree: Kueng seems to be giving too much ground.

Here's a question, though: was Kueng speaking politically or religiously?

If, for example, Jesus himself were to speak on the issue of "the right to offend," Jesus would probably speak religiously, and urge people to practice love, compassion, and honesty. He would probably say that there are times when honesty itself can be offensive, but at those times, offensiveness can't be helped because people should always cleave to the truth.

However, I'm sure Jesus would also argue that unnecessary provocation (I'll leave a definition of "unnecessary" for later) is to be avoided-- this in the name of loving and compassionate conduct, each of us treating the other as children of God. This would put Jesus' (admittedly hypothetical) point of view fairly close to Kueng's.

If Kueng is speaking religiously, as a priest or man of conscience, I think he may be justified in urging people to practice compassion. His advocacy of a free and responsible press makes sense from that perspective. If, however, Kueng is speaking politically, then his stance is indeed problematic.

What I'm trying to say is this: of course a civilized person of faith will speak out against unnecessarily offensive expression and action (obviously, I'm excluding preachers of hate when I say "civilized")-- we shouldn't expect otherwise. In doing so, such people are speaking religiously, i.e., from the depths of their religious orientation.

This raises meta-questions, though. If a person of faith can be expected to preach compassion even in the face of violence that has the potential to affect more than just oneself, is the preaching of compassion a responsible thing to do? If we disapprove of Kueng's stance, is it because we think he is giving ground to "the enemy"? Is our own evaluation of Kueng religious? Political? A mixture of both?

I have no immediate answers to these questions. The main point of this post is to suggest that, if, for example, a Buddhist monk were to argue during a dharma talk that war is not the best solution to a massive and pressing problem, we should not be surprised to hear such speech, given who the speaker is.

A final note: Dr. Kueng's stance regarding free speech offers us only a glimpse into his larger worldview. While Kueng represents a (very) liberal strain of Catholic theology, I have no doubt he would have something to say to adherents of other religions regarding the way they conduct themselves in this global village. As one of the main architects of the modern expression of "global ethics," Kueng would doubtless disapprove of current Muslim reactions to the cartoon controversy. At least... I hope he would.

[NB: Dr. Kueng's article, "How to Prevent a Clash of Civilizations," is here. My quick take: Kueng is right to note that the West should engage in self-criticism, but he overstates the point. In fact, one of the West's signal virtues, its pluralism, ensures that it is always engaged in self-criticism. While polarization such as what we see in America today can be deleterious, it is also a reflection of a robust culture of self-examination and debate. In addition, Kueng seems too willing to let Islamdom off the hook for its own misdeeds, and he makes some facile cause/effect connections when painting a picture of the history of the Muslim plight. I do agree, however, with his call for continued interreligious dialogue. People who don't talk to each other feel free to construct bitter falsehoods about each other.]

UPDATE: Riding Sun offers a blunter take than my own.


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